Tag Archives: Dartmouth 7

Dartmouth Folklore & Collection Process

Proof of Dartmouth Folklore

The Dartmouth Seven, the Ledyard Bridge Challenge, and the Lou’s Challenge are all well-known challenges among the Dartmouth “folk” (i.e. students, professors). These three challenges are the most well-known among Dartmouth Students. The origin of each is unknown, but there are rumors about where each one comes from. Most Dartmouth students hear about these challenges from either an upperclassman or a fellow classmate. Because these challenges are passed on from incoming freshman class to incoming freshman class, it is proof of its folklore; the Dartmouth Seven, the Ledyard Bridge Challenge, and Lou’s Challenge survive because they are passed down annually to new Dartmouth students.

How We Collected Our Folklore

The stories were collected from a range of Dartmouth students and Dartmouth Alumni, both male and female. Through one-on-one interviews, we were able to collect Dartmouth Challenge stories. In addition, surveys were conducted in order to get the broadest range of contributions possible.

All of the stories we collected were from people who wished to remain anonymous. In order to respect their wishes for privacy, we removed their names from our database and changed the names of people within the various folklore examples.

We decided to choose the most PG-13 related Dartmouth Challenges stories due to the graphic content some stories contain. Because we wished the stories to stay a true as possible from our informants, if a story was too graphic we left it out. We choose the best six stories for each Dartmouth Challenge to include in our collection project.

Finally, participants were asked why they partake in these challenges and what the challenges mean to them. Due to the similarity of many of the responses, we combined them all into one collective response at the bottom of each challenge page under our collector’s comment section.